Calendar

Instagram

The students at the Orthogenic School have the opportunity to participate in a wide array of artistic endeavors. Our Fine Arts Program has involved young artists in painting , printmaking, photography, digital imaging, drawing, quilting and more… This website showcases samples of their work and projects.

The Classroom: The classroom is exceptionally large and organized. The room is sectioned off into 3 main areas: seating and working, printmaking with press, and junior achievement (a small screen printing business that is student run). There is plenty of shelving for materials and each student in the school has a flat file for their projects. The room is organized in a way that students can easily find and access materials. While dangerous materials are behind a lock and key cabinet. The room is equipped with 2 desktop computers for printing and 10 laptops. There is also a media cart with speakers and a projector, a pull down screen and a large chalkboard. Large tables dominate the center of the room for the students to sit at. Also a large section of the wall is cork broad for hanging work onto along with announcements, and posters of artists. The teachers’ desks are situated so that they can see everyone in the room. Additionally there are three bookshelves with a myriad of types of books related to art and design

In the Art Room at the Sonia Shankman Orthogenic School our goal is to inspire growth at the deepest level. Our concept of artistic growth includes intellectual depth, social maturity, as well as local and global awareness. It is our job to mentor students so that they can benefit from exposure to the arts and grow. I value the critical thinking skills I acquired from attending both a liberal arts university UNC-A and the MFA program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Developing and continuing to improve critical thinking skills is essential to education and growth. The study of the Visual Arts continues to be an excellent way to provide young people with powerful insights and practice of critical thinking. Simpson (1998) in Creating Meaning Through Art, states, “thinking with images is the most effective strategy for critical thinking skills associated with certain reasoning and insight problems (Simpson, p. 270)”. Keeping critical thinking at the forefront of a Visual Arts curriculum is key to building 21st century skills in the classroom. We use a combination of Discipline Based Art Education (DBAE) and Arts Integration instructional methods in our classroom to foster and build critical thinking skills, a skill that will be necessary for a successful and enriching lifetime of learning. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions at: hwilliams@oschool.org